This document summarizes the North Carolina State University Extension's use of a single WordPress installation to power over 180 subdomain sites for county extension offices. Key points include: - They use DNS to direct every subdomain (e.g. countyname.ces.ncsu.edu) to the same WordPress server. - A single WordPress theme is used across all sites with only minor customizations, keeping the approach simple and code reusable. - Over 650 users have published 19,000 pages and received over 6.5 million views since launching in 2012.

1. &
Scott McCollum
Extension Information Technology
scott_mccollum@ncsu.edu | @scottmccollum
Mike Vysocka
Extension Information Technology
mike_vysocka@ncsu.edu | @thewebvy

2. 1997
Through the years ...
2004

3. 2005 2010

4. 2012

6. ● Thousands of pieces of content to move
● Update and request new DNS entries
● Setup tons of 301 Redirects, RedirectMatch
● Actively communicate with users
● Provide training for users

7. What did WordPress give us?
● A real Content Management System
● Blogging: Point, Click, Publish
● Core Updates
● A huge user community
● ...

8. Could a single Wordpress
instance, without any plugins,
and just a single theme
keep 100+ site owners happy
?
BUT …
and no, we’re not using WordPress MU

9. YES

10. 184 domains created
strawberries
pender growingsmallfarms
www.ces.ncsu.edu
148 are live today.
mecklenburg

11. 651 users
have published or edited content
19,000 pages/posts
currently published
6,500,000 page views
since launching July 1, 2012
As of April 2014 ...

13. October 25, 2013
We went mobile

14. * .ces.ncsu.edu domains
alamance - alexander - alleghany - als - anr - anson - ashe - avery - beaufort - bertie - bladen -
blueberries - brunswick - buncombe - burke - cabarrus - cabbage - caldwell - calsleadership -
camden - carteret - caswell - catawba - chatham - cherokee - chowan - clay - cleveland -
colecrops - columbus - communitydevelopment - conference - cotton - craven - cucurbits -
cumberland - currituck - cutflowers - dare - davidson - davie - duplin - durham - ebci -
edgecombe - eggplant - energy - entomology - eod - espanol - evaluation - extensiongardener
- fcs - fieldtoschool - floriculture - foodsafety - forsyth - franklin - gardening - gaston - gates -
giving - graham - granville - grapes - greene - greenhousecrops - greens - growingsmallfarms -
guilford - halifax - harnett - haywood - henderson - hertford - hoke - horticulture - hyde -
intranet2 - ipm - iredell - jackson - johnston - jones - lee - lenoir - lettuce - lincoln - localfood -
macon - madison - marketingtoolkit - martin - mcdowell - meatgoats - mecklenburg - mitchell -
montgomery - moore - nash - nc10percent - ncce100years - ncchoices - nccommunitygardens
- ncdisaster - ncstepstohealth - newhanover - northampton - northcentral - northeast - onslow -
orange - pamlico - pasquotank - peaches - pender - peppers - perquimans - person -
pesticidenews - pitt - plantpathology - poinsettias - polk - postharvest - poultry - poultry4hyouth
- randolph - registration - richmond - robeson - rockingham - rootcrops - rowan - rubus -
rutherford - sampson - scotland - shellfish - soils - southcentral - southeast - soybeans -
spinach - stanly - state - stokes - strawberries - surry - sustainability - swain - sweetpotatoes -
therapeutic-hort - tobacco - tomatoes - transylvania - tyrrell - union - vance - vegetables - wake
- warren - washington - watauga - wayne - weeds - west - wilkes - wilson - yadkin - yancey

15. How does it work?

16. We use all 4th level domains
someName.ces.ncsu.edu
someOtherName.ces.ncsu.edu
... yes, we use 180+ of them.
You could easily do this for your domain
mySiteName.myuniv.edu
mySiteName2.myuniv.edu
... ^ and, they don't even have to be fourth level!

17. Using DNS, every sub-domain is
aliased to the same server

19. http://wolfpack.ces.ncsu.edu
$_SERVER[“HTTP_HOST”]
echo preg_replace(“/.ces.ncsu.edu$/”, ‘’, $_SERVER[“HTTP_HOST”] );
// prints “wolfpack”

21. Keep it simple.
Do your best to avoid one-off feature
requests, use a common header / footer
with only slight variations. Can the code
you write be used on 10 or more domains?

22. lines of code in our theme’s functions.php
file handle the edge cases, quirky requests,
custom views, and self-imploding ideas our
650+ users have for their 180+ websites
1900
/* and about 15% of those lines are
comments! */

23. Creating a new site is easy.
1. We get a DNS entry for the new domain
i.e. wolfpack.ces.ncsu.edu
2. We create a Wordpress user named wolfpack, just as
you normally would. This creates an entry in wp_users

24. We use our campus authentication to
supersede the native Wordpress login
But you could just as easily use OAuth, LDAP,
htaccess, etc.
You could argue, this adds a layer of security.
But really, we're just using it so we can map multiple real users, real people and
their logins to a single wordpress user.

25. 3. We create an access table in the Wordpress
database that will map organizational userIDs
to a particular Wordpress username in the
wp_users table.
i.e. an email address, eXtensionID, unityID
user_id wp_user_login access_level
jesmith2@ncsu.edu wolfpack editor
jesmith2@ncsu.edu sweetpotatoes editor
brjohnson@ncsu.edu wolfpack admin

26. Having multiple folks sign in under the
wordpress user ‘wolfpack’ makes author
attribution messy.
Use wp_postmeta table

27. 4. Create another custom table with some meta
data about each of your sites.

28. You can choose to leverage Wordpress'
wp_usermeta table instead

29. Use native Wordpress functions (hooks,
actions, filters)
● get_post_meta()
● get_author_meta()
● get_posts($args)
● get_usermeta()
Or write your own ...
● __get_site_type()
● __get_site_name()
● __get_author_ldap()

30. portal
county
county
if($siteType == ‘portal’){
get_full_banner();
}
elseif($siteType == ‘county’){
get_color_block();
get_small_banner();
}
1 theme, and a few small tweaks
the codethe visual

31. We put every WordPress author on an island

32. Use Wordpress' built-in filters and actions behind the scenes

34. ● Centralized Google Analytics
● Content Sharing
● Content QA
● Faster Feature Rollouts
● Wider, Faster A/B Split Tests
● Easier Access Control
● One Stop Publishing
BIG Benefits
to being under the same umbrella

35. Link to these slides:
go.ncsu.edu/wordpress
How did we do?
joind.in/9879